Alumna: Hana Bacaj – RIT Kosovo Class of 2017

Hana Bacaj has graduated from RIT Kosovo in May 2017 as class Salutatorian with a 4.0 GPA in Economics & Statistics and Management & Entrepreneurship. Her engagement in extracurricular activities was a very crucial component of her education at RIT Kosovo. She was an active member of the Charity Club and volunteered for almost all their activities for four years. She was also part of the Economist Club and the MUN Club. Moreover, she completed one semester abroad in Prague, Czech Republic and summer school in Ljubljana, Slovenia during her studies at RIT Kosovo (A.U.K).

After graduation, she worked for a year at UBO Consulting as a Junior Research Analyst where she did market research and analyses for donor organizations and various firms in the private and public sector. As such, she believes to have gained knowledge in working with real-world issues.

Ms. Bacaj is one of the five recipients of the Kosovo American Education Fund (KAEF) in 2018. She got a scholarship for her Master studies in the US. Currently, she is a first-year graduate student in Economic Development at Vanderbilt University where she is gaining high-quality academic training in the development field, learning about the economic tools and data-analytics used to overcome poverty and create sustainable communities.

Furthermore, she managed to be part of a consultancy project as part of the course Project Pyramid. As part of this course, she is working with an Ecuadorian Social Enterprise called Waykana that sells organic energy tea and won the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) pitch prize in the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Hana together with her team, will be traveling to Quito, Ecuador 1st of March to meet with the a client and help Waykana to scale-up their organization internationally, which as a result will help employ more impoverished indigenous farmers from Ecuador. She is also working as a graduate teaching assistant (TA) for the course of Social Enterprise Consulting. Additionally, she is a chair of The Turner Family Center for Social Ventures (TFC) at Vanderbilt University, which is a student-led organization committed to alleviating poverty using market-driven forces and enterprises.

Hana’s passion is to work hard on finding solutions to persisting societal problems in Kosovo such as education and inequality.

The education at RIT Kosovo (A.U.K) has equipped Hana with practical skills and knowledge that she can apply in the workplace and in her graduate studies. Also, Hana’s experience at RIT Kosovo (A.U.K) taught her the necessary soft-skills to thrive in the workplace and further studies like communication, teamwork, critical thinking and problem-solving.

Ms. Hana Bacaj believes that RIT Kosovo (A.U.K) for sure will help students towards professional and academic success and that is why they should take advantage of every opportunity that RIT Kosovo (A.U.K) offers.